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Selected by Evelyn Waugh as the best first novel of 1953, and phenomenally praised by critics on first publication, Hugo Charteris’ A Share of the World is one of the great lost novels. This is the first republication in a concerted programme of bringing all of Charteris’ works back into print. This harrowing story of a man lost in his times, bewildered and anguished by both war and love, is a masterful portrayal of the human psyche at odds with itself. John Grant has a short war. In a matter of three or four days his career as an officer in active service is over, after a disastrous sortie in the Italian campaign in which one of his men is let down terribly. Back home, reeling with dislocation and yearning, John seeks solace, absolution, a future, and most importantly, love. Although John’s story is astonishingly powerful and deeply moving, this extraordinary book has one more ace up its sleeve: Hugo Charteris’ intense, atmospheric, drily witty and emotionally searching style. In it there are ingredients which make for one of the great experiences of post-war British literature. A Share of the World burst onto the 1950s literary scene like a truth-incendiary, garnering the author plaudits from critics as disparate as Rosamond Lehmann ‘one of the most impressive first novels I have read for a long time’… Francis Wyndham ‘the most impressive first novel that has appeared since the war’… and Robert Henriques ‘all the characters are without exception almost instantly alive…first-rate’. The author’s daughter, Jane Charteris, looks back at this brilliant book, and provides a unique insight into its author, in an introduction written specially for this edition.
